KYIV: A series of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv killed seven people and wounded a dozen more, Kyiv said on Saturday.

The northeastern city, 30 kilometres from the Russian border, has seen increased deadly attacks in recent months, more than two years into Moscow’s invasion. An overnight attack killed six people; while another person died in a separate strike on Saturday, authorities said.

“Six killed and 11 wounded as a result of the enemy’s night-time missile attack on Kharkiv,” the local prosecutor’s office said on social media. Authorities said the strike hit just after midnight.

“At about 12:20am, the Russian armed forces launched missile attacks on the residential Shevchenkivskyi district of Kharkiv,” the prosecutor’s office said. “High-rise buildings, administrative buildings, dormitories, a kindergarten, shops, cafes and cars were damaged.”

Kharkiv police said Russian forces fired two S-300 missiles at the city and then attacked with drones during rescue operations. “At night, the Russians attacked Kharkiv with S-300. On a city that is sleeping,” Volodymyr Tymoshko of the local police force said on social media. He said Russia then used “the practice of repeated shelling”. “When all relevant services were working at the site of the missile hit, enemy drones arrived,” he said, adding that air defence downed them.

Another strike on the Shevchenkivskyi district on Saturday caused damaged to civilian infrastructure and set a car on fire. “According to preliminary data, one person died, another was wounded,” Oleg Sinegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional state administration, said.

‘Russian terror’

Local officials earlier said that the six dead were killed by the drones. Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said Russia attacked “while Kharkiv residents were sleeping peacefully”. He said “nine residential buildings” were damaged as well as “two kindergartens, two schools” and “several dozen shops”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the “Russian terror against Kharkiv” and called for increased Western air defence deliveries to protect the northeastern region.

The Russian army said it had destroyed two anti-aircraft systems in Kharkiv.

Ukrainian police said there was a separate attack on Mala Danylivka, a village on Kharkiv’s northwest outskirts, which did not result in casualties. Photos released by police on Telegram showed several fires in civilian areas, including near a high-rise apartment building.

The attacks came as Ukraine’s airforce reported multiple groups of Russian drones across the country.

In the southern Kherson region, authorities on Saturday said they recovered the bodies of a couple in their 50s and 60s killed by a Russian missile attack a day earlier.

“Yesterday, the occupiers attacked the village of Zmiivka in Beryslav district with guided missiles. “A building was damaged as a result of the hit,” said Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the Kherson region. “Under the rubble, rescuers found the bodies of two victims — a man born in 1957 and a woman born in 1965,” he added.

The attacks on Kharkiv came a day after a Russian strike on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia killed four people and wounded more than 20. Ukraine’s interior ministry on Saturday updated the wounded toll in the Zaporizhzhia strike to 23, which included two children.

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2024